Sculpture in the garden

The splendid website ThinkinGardens hosted a discussion a while ago on sculpture in the garden. One commenter argued that a garden setting can enhance a sculpture, but that she had never seen sculpture enhance a garden. Instead “as you drop a sculpture into a garden setting, it takes centre stage shouting ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ … The garden becomes a backdrop.”

It’s an interesting notion, and I decided to test it by an entirely unscientific trawl through my photo archives, looking for images of sculptures in gardens. These are not sculptures designed and installed at the same time as the garden, where you might expect a thoughtful balance between the two; they are pieces added subsequently, most of them as temporary exhibitions in established gardens.

First, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 16-day display The Gates in New York’s Central Park in 2005 (OK, it’s not a garden, but it’s a good match in other ways). I was lucky enough to discuss the project with its creators shortly before installation (see photo of the duo with their plans). They intended the 7,500 saffron-coloured structures weaving through the park to encourage people to look at this iconic landscape in a new way. Sadly it seemed to me not really to work. The boxy shape of the gates did offer an interesting mirror of the rectangular skyscrapers around the park, but the thousands of structures somehow seemed like they had just been plonked in the park, shouting “Look at me!” without adding any new perspectives.Here’s a more successful example from summer 2011: woven willow and chestnut structures by the American Patrick Dougherty at the chateau of Trévarez in Brittany, northwest France. Some of Dougherty’s works do undoubtedly overwhelm their surroundings, but at Trévarez it seemed to me the organic structures helped you look afresh at the garden.The shape of this temporary shelter offered a sinuous modern version of the adjacent stone building, and the windows framed surprising and pleasing views of the sumptuous planting.

Another set of willow structures, this time by Tom Hare, was installed at Kew Gardens as part of its 250th anniversary celebrations. They represent seeds – some of them more interesting than this one of a devil’s claw – and they have a nice sinuous quality. But for me they don’t really enhance our appreciation of the surrounding garden, especially with that rather naff little barrier to keep the sculpture decidedly separate from its setting.

Another temporary display in a botanical garden, with another intrusive barrier, is this 2012 example of dancing figures by Zadok Ben-David, in Singapore. The figures are smaller than you might think, much smaller than actual size, and seem somehow fiddly, and disengaged from their surroundings by that distracting chain barrier.

Here’s another figurative set of sculptures, but I think these work much more cohesively in their surroundings. These are some fine Rodin figures, installed as a temporary display in the square outside the CaixaForum art gallery in Madrid. The building is a striking mix of oxidised cast iron and brick, set off by a large Patrick Blanc vertical garden to one side. The traditional figures provided a lovely counterpoint to their contemporary setting and make us admire both the building and the green wall all the more.

A very simple example next, from Le Nôtre’s vast gardens at Sceaux, south of Paris. The sculpture by René Letourneur is not temporary, but it is a late addition – being installed around 1950 in this seventeenth century landscape. Called L’Aurore (dawn), it is positioned carefully to catch the morning light in a shady corner, and makes us notice and admire a quiet space that otherwise would get lost among the grandeur and dazzle of the rest of Sceaux.

Here’s a very different use of sculpture in a Le Nôtre garden, this one by Takashi Murakami at Versailles in 2010. I wrote at the time how much I loved the juxtaposition between the obscene extravagance of the Sun King’s palace and the mad plastic manga creations displayed incongruously in its midst. The snarling Oval Buddha in the gardens offered wonderful visual links with the gilded fountains and gates of Le Nôtre’s great design, and a thought-provoking contrast with its many baroque statues. Not many places could stand up to that vast gleaming sculpture, but it makes us admire Versailles anew that these gardens definitely could.

Here’s my final example: it’s a temporary exhibition in a traditional display space, not a garden at all. But for me it illustrates perfectly how even the most enormous, preposterous installation that shrieks “Look at me!” can still profoundly enhance its surroundings. This is Anish Kapoor’s bonkers Leviathan sculpture that filled the Grand Palais in Paris for five weeks in 2011. It was a vast purple rubber cathedral swelling up into the belle époque exhibition hall, making the visitor gasp at its size and audacity. But it did not overwhelm the setting; instead its mad shape and size drew equal attention to the beautiful ironwork and glass of this most majestic of spaces.

These are personal choices and views of course. I’d be interested to know what others think.

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4 comments on “Sculpture in the garden”

Patrick Dougherty’s installation at Dumbarton Oaks helped me notice and admire the formal and more traditional oval garden. Again, it had windows that allowed you to enter and peek out onto the garden, seeing it framed in new ways. Gary Smith’s snaking line of sticks laid end to end at Garden in the Woods drew attention to the shape of the land around it, something a visitor might otherwise miss — much as the statue of Aurora you show.

On the general topic, I’d ask a slightly different question. What is the difference between a piece of sculpture that says “hey, look at me,” and the showy plant that is positioned to provide a focal point?

I often ponder this topic. Your post highlights contemporary installations, which sometimes make me wrestle with deciding “does it work”? – unlike older sculptures which have been in place so long they are sometimes not even seen. Dumbarton Oaks has recently had two very successful contemporary installations, Patrick Dougherty’s ‘Easy Rider’ (2011) and this year’s ‘Cloud Terrace’ by Andy Cao. I loved both of them, especially ‘Cloud Terrace’ which delighted me with how the crystals sparkled in the sunlight. Nevertheless, how much of the pleasure offered by these two installations was due to their ephemeral nature? Would ‘Cloud Terrace’ continue to delight year after year, or would it begin to be seen as blocking the view of the terrace where it is installed? A interesting topic worthy of more discussion.

I have contrary opinions about the use of sculptures in the garden. In general, streets, cities are so full of any kind of objects and signals that I need gardens and urban parks to be empty of those distractions, but I understand it almost impossible to conceive. What I ask to a sculpture in a garden is to be conceptually connected with the scenery in order to create a dialogue; also I need the sculpture/s to be working on its own as if they could be shown in another different place. Your post made me remember some interesting cases I photographed time ago, especially the Verbeke Foundation gardens and sculptures near Antwerp, a natural space devised by his founder with the purpose to show creations designed in/for/with the landscape-gardens. I did not post about it, but I think the experiment deserves discussion.